House panel prepares to take up Corcoran plan

April 15, 2013|Kathleen Haughney

TALLAHASSEE -- As a House committee prepares to take its first look at a plan to offer health coverage to 115,700 low income Floridians, health care advocates are making their final pitches on why the state needs to accept $51 billion from the federal government and insure about 1 million people.

"I am sick and tired of Florida being a donor state," said U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, who was in Tallahassee Monday to speak out against the House plan.

The House released its plan Thursday to cover 115,700 people who make up to 100 percent of the poverty line. They would be given $2,000 per year and kick in $300 of their own to pay for insurance. The cost over 10 years is roughly $2.37 billion.

Health care advocates quickly criticized the House plan because it covered far less than either traditional Medicaid expansion or a plan by Senate Budget Chair Joe Negron, R-Stuart, that would take federal money and put 1 million people into private insurance companies.

Brown, accompanied by House Democrats, SEIU and an PICO, an Orlando faith-based advocacy group, said the state was essentially paying for other states to expand Medicaid while their own residents got nothing.

The House Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Committee meets today at 1 p.m. A Senate panel will take up Negron's plan as well as a second alternative by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, that would serve about 60,000 Floridians by giving them about $10 per month (They'd also contribute $20 per month of their own money.)